Books like The Strangler Vine — picked by fans

The White Tiger is a witty and searing portrayal of a “self-made” man who has risen from the depths of abject poverty to a position of wealth and influence. 

The India portrayed is far from the glitz and romantic notions of Bollywood. It is a desperately poor place where the “haves” live like kings and the “have-nots" live like slaves.

In addition to shedding light on some of the harsh realities of class, economics, and corruption in India, The White Tiger somehow manages to subvert expectations and coax the reader into rooting for a murderer and thief who justifies his actions, not entirely convincingly, by describing himself as a sort of working-class hero.

In reality, he is more of a cautionary tale.

The Far Pavilions is one of the most beautiful, culturally aware, historically accurate, and vivid books I’ve ever read, and I re-read it every few years.

I’ve loaned this book and not gotten it back so many times that I’m sure it’s still in print because of the number of copies I’ve had to buy to replace it. Based on the history of British direct rule in India, it tells the story of a young British boy raised as Indian by the nanny who saves his life during the Sepoy uprisings.

He struggles with having a foot in two worlds and not really belonging to either, and the author does a fantastic job of illustrating this. India truly comes alive.

Give me an array of spicy Indian food, a handsome hero, and a good Bollywood movie, and I’m set for the evening. But this book transported me to a different period in Indian history. I teetered on a cliff's edge as the intrigue and drama of Lin’s tale unfolded. 

The story moves from one heart-stopping incident to another as it transitions through the gritty criminal underworld, congested streets, and overcrowded slums of India in the 1980s. It gripped me from the beginning and kept my earpods glued to my ears until the end. It was one of the most compelling biographies I’ve ever listened to.

Set in the rugged and remote regions of Afghanistan and the Himalayas, this Rudyard Kipling book follows two British adventurers who seek to carve out their own kingdom among the native tribes. Their audacious quest for power and wealth in forbidden lands leads to a tragic unraveling of their ambitions.

Through vivid storytelling and rich symbolism, Kipling delves into themes of imperialism, cultural arrogance, and the clash between civilizations. The forbidden territories they seek to conquer serve as a backdrop for exploring the darker aspects of human ambition and colonialism, making it a seminal work in literature.

This book–and its extraordinary film adaptation by John Huston, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine–is a recurring source of inspiration in my work.

When a horror thriller can straddle mystery and true crime and stick the landing like this book does, I’m in.

I was immediately invested in Liz’s journey back to her hometown. I love the reunion trope, but what Liz comes up against is so strange and intriguing that I knew after the opening I wasn’t putting this one down until I devoured this book. Her inner strength and determination to solve the town’s big mystery had me cheering for her every step of the way.

Oh, and I did not see that ending coming, OMG.

I also said of Sullivan’s Sleeping Bear, “This guy gets it.”

In particular, Connor captures the internal, psychological symptoms of PTSD with his protagonist Cassie Gale, an Army veteran that experiences a soul-shattering trauma.

As a result, Gale withdraws into herself, isolates and seeks solitude away from all her friends and family, and misleads people on her wellbeing, mental state, and readjustment after the event. 

What I found particularly intriguing about Sullivan’s debut novel was the dual aspect of both Cassie’s symptoms, and that of the buried emotions and memories of her dad.

As the plot unfolds and Cassie’s father Jim is pulled into the story, he experiences his own psychological symptoms as events from his service are recollected, all while wrestling with the undeniable panic of a parent worried sick over the fate of their child.

I again was surprised to learn that Connor wasn’t a veteran, as… show more.

A book with twists, turns, surprises, and places where the reader says, “What?” always makes for a great book club read, and this is one of those.

There is so much to discuss about Jenna, a young girl searching for her mother, and the people she encounters. The psychic and detective who help her are unique characters, and the mystery has readers guessing clear to the end. 

This multi-layered story is peppered with research on elephants via Jenna’s mother’s journals and provides another level of information for great discussions.  

I have to say, that after reading this book, I’ve logged into the Elecam to see the elephants in Tennessee numerous times.

I enjoy Linwood Barclay for his intriguing openings that grip right from the start and then how he racks up the tension until the end. This was his first thriller and wow—what a debut! It starts when a teenage girl, Cynthia, wakes to find her house deserted and the whole family—mum, dad, and brother missing. Jump forward to 25 years later and the mystery of her family’s disappearance is still unsolved and still haunts Cynthia. But then a letter arrives tipping her whole world upside down and placing her in grave danger… Another unputdownable read!

Shirley is set in author Shirley Jackson’s rambling Victorian house in Vermont, adjacent to the Bennington College campus. This is a story of psychological intrigue and intertwined creative and destructive influences, families in trouble, and ghostly presences. The story is narrated by a young faculty wife, Rose. She and her husband, a new professor at the College, live with Jackson and her husband, Professor Stanley Hyman. The house and the household are attractive and sinister, emotionally fraught and seductive. Merrell and I met as classmates in the Bennington Writing Seminars. We exchanged manuscripts for our then novels-in-progress. Now, as I re-read Shirley, I remember our walks past the house.

There are some writers I read purely for the pleasure of a well-written sentence. Don is one of those, because he is a Literary Writer™ – he edited one of the premier literary journals for many years. But here’s the thing – he is also one hell of a plotter. This first novel of his caught the letters community by surprise, but not me; the intricate construction of his short stories could only lead to a tale as labyrinthine as this one. Featuring classic mystery tropes, Country of Origin is a missing person case that leads our hero, an American Embassy officer in Tokyo, to seedy strip clubs, dangerous love affairs, and the CIA, all delivered with surgical prose that would make Raymond Chandler blush.